One of the main causes of climate change has been identified as the use of coal for power generation. Renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro and solar must replace fossil fuels to curb this climate change.

Fortunately, more and more wind energy is being used every year. After hydro, it is currently the second most popular energy source. This growing trend will continue until 2050, when it is expected to dominate the power generation landscape. To support this constructive and sustainable trend, it is necessary to develop educational programs and implement educational actions to train students who will become future workers and researchers in this area.

Software tools are very useful for developing training programs: students are more motivated because they learn by playing with the tool, it makes it easier to follow the learning process and students can use them at any time. This learning by doing approach helps to combine training with the rest of daily life activities.
In this paper, a learning tool is proposed to develop training programs in wind turbine control. The learning tool is developed in Matlab and SIMENS TIA Portal. They communicate using the OPC-UA protocol. The wind turbine controller runs on TIA Portal and acts as an OPC-UA server. Simulink runs the executions of the wind turbine's digital twin and serves as an OPC-UA client. The tool allows the wind turbine to be controlled automatically or manually, set references signals, and test different wind profiles.

The tool facilitates learning about the operating regions and their influence on the behavior of wind turbines and the control process. In addition, it facilitates training in advanced communication protocols such as OPC UA and the acquisition of knowledge in control engineering, modeling and digital twin concepts.

To maximize the impact of the tool, it is accompanied by a didactic proposal organized based on learning objectives, content, skills, schedule and an evaluation methodology.

Keywords: Learning-by-doing, learning tool, motivational education, wind energy, control engineering.